Integrated sustainable urban infrastructures in building projects

Current strategies in urban planning and development merely promote standardized building solutions, while failing to prioritize innovative approaches of integration between building projects and sustainable urban infrastructures. As a result of this, urban infrastructures – the urban veins – are outdated from a sustainability perspective. This paper looks into more holistic ways of approaching building projects and discuss whether this provide a basis for an increased integration of urban infrastructures within building projects. In our study, we especially emphasise how conventional ways of approaching building projects are influenced by lock-in of existing infrastructural systems and compare this with two examples of more holistic ways of approaching building projects, developed by two architecture firms. The paper points out that such holistic perspective in building projects provide an improved breeding-ground for more innovative integration of sustainable urban infrastructure, but we also point out other important issues to be dealt with.